My day job is web app development, but for the past year or so I've dedicated much of my spare time to making games. Or, more accurately, I've been trying to ma

My day job is web app development, but for the past year or so I've dedicated much of my spare time to making games. Or, more accurately, I've been trying to make games. So far I've just published only one, a mobile game that was not successful and, I have to admit in hindsight, really wasn't very good. When it comes to game development in particular, I've heard it over and over again that 'ideas are worthless.' But it's become obvious to me that the exact opposite is true: ideas are everything. What I've been struggling to do in this past year is idea-forging, basically. I've been desperately clawing my way towards an elegant game idea which is both (1) fun/unique/interesting and (2) small enough in scope that I can create it in my spare time. At many points I've thought I've had such an idea, only to realize that the idea wasn't that great or the scope was much larger than I anticipated after some prototyping. I completely agree with the article when it comes to how difficult it is to evaluate ideas before they've been implemented: Good ideas probably don't often initially look like good ideas. And bad ideas often look incredibly enticing. And I'm pretty sure that truly new ideas almost always look like bad ideas until you've actually seen them in action. (I guess this is part of why we see so many sequels and remakes from established game companies these days. New game ideas are risky, hard to evaluate, and probably expensive to prototype.)